Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the
James D. Julia Auction House up in Maine
taking a look at an assortment of rifles
that they are going to be selling
in their spring of 2017 auction this April.
What we have here today is pretty much
the whole story of the British Number 1 Mark VI rifle.
Now this is the final evolution of the Number 1,
which was also known as the "smellie", the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield.
This started with the Number 1 Mark III really,
which was the standard British rifle in World War One. Pretty well known.
The Number 1 Mark IV was a .22 calibre training conversion.
And then the Number 1 Mark V is what the British went to and developed after ... World War One.
There were a number of issues with the SMLE
as it had served in World War One, and they wanted to fix these.
Namely, they wanted to get rid of the tangent sight located on the back of the receiver
and replace that with an aperture sight.
They wanted a shorter, lighter bayonet.
Bayonets were really not all that relevant, not in the way that they had been before World War One.
You don't need a long bayonet and a long rifle to fend off cavalry charges anymore.
And they actually wanted a heavier profile barrel to make for a more accurate rifle.
So these changes all went into the design room,
and what came out was the Number 1 Mark V Enfield.
Which is basically a Number 1 Mark III that has the rear aperture sight off of a P17 Enfield.
And this is a pretty good rifle.
And in the mid-1920s (from '22 to '24 I believe),
they manufactured a run of 20,000 of the Number 1 Mark V for troop trials.
And in fact group trials went pretty well, it was a well-liked rifle.
However, they were continuing to experiment with designs.
And the plan had been if the Number 1 Mark V worked out really well
they would just start converting Number 1 Mark III rifles en masse into Number 1 Mark Vs.
However they kept experimenting and they actually,
even though the trials went pretty well, they ended up finding
a series of features that actually worked a little better.
And that turned into the Number 1 Mark VI.
What we have here is the very first, well maybe not the very first,
but a Number 1 Mark VI prototype from before it was even identified as the Mark VI.
This still shares a couple of features with the Mark V rifles.
Then we have an actual prototype Number 1 Mark VI.
And then we have two of the production guns.
And what's interesting about these is it was actually formally identified
as Number 1 Mark VI for the first 1,000 gun production run, circa 1929.
But then in 1931 they didn't actually adopt a new version of the rifle,
they just took the existing one and redesignated it,
they renamed it the Number 4 Mark I rifle.
And it's under that name that it would eventually be fully adopted and put into production,
and would be the standard British rifle in World War Two.
So what we have here are two of those final models.
They made about 1,000 of them designated Number 1 Mark VI, which are these guys, for trials.
And then in around 1931, '30 and '31, they made another 2,500 of them.
Basically the same gun for continuing trials with a few changes,
and with the new designation Number 4 Mark I.
And so that's what we have here.
So let's go ahead and take a closer look at all four of these,
and see how this design evolved into what would become
the standard British World War Two rifle.
We are going to see the most unusual and distinctive features on this,
the very first prototype of the Number 1 Mark VI.
To start with, it does not have any markings on the socket here,
which is where you would typically expect them on a Lee-Enfield pattern rifle.
Instead it has just this one marking: serial number LT 3 101.
So there's an LT series of prototypes, and this is one of them.
And that's marked actually on the top of the socket.
So this first prototype does have pretty much all of the basic features
that we would expect on a Number 4 rifle, but not quite in their final form yet.
We have a rear-mounted aperture sight, but we have a squared-off rear aperture here.
And of course these big protective wings,
which will be abandoned by the time we get to the production.
In fact these will be abandoned by the time we get to the
... production level of the Number 1 Mark VI, much less the Number 4 rifles.
At this point there is still a cartridge cut off.
It no longer has a viewing hole through the centre of it,
but that hasn't quite been completely abandoned yet.
Although it would be by the time the Number 4 went into full production.
Unique to this prototype there is no graspable cocking piece.
So typically on both the rifles that came before and after it,
you could actually get a grip on the back of the cocking piece.
So that if you had a dud round, or for any other reason
needed to re-cock the rifle without cycling the bolt, you could.
On this one that is a much slimmer piece.
You'll see it sticks out here when the rifle is cocked,
but when it is not, it's completely flush with the back of the bolt.
So there's no way to grab it and do anything manually with it.
The most distinctive single feature of the Number 1 Mark VI rifles
is actually this checkering on the bottom handguard.
And we'll see it here on the early prototype.
That was actually there to give you a better grip for bayonet combat actually.
That wasn't so much for shooting, but for making sure that you could
grasp the rifle effectively and not slip when stabbing someone with the bayonet.
One of the other really distinctive items on this prototype is the nose cap
which is very reminiscent of the Number 1 Mark III,
although it doesn't come back as far as that standard rifle did.
But it still has the same basic form.
It also however has the bayonet ... lugs for what would become the Number 4 rifle bayonet.
Which is just a spike, although they did make a bladed version as well.
But it simply slides over the muzzle, and rotates to lock in place.
It's no longer a sword-style bayonet with a lug down here somewhere.
And for that reason this nose cap was shortened considerably.
It does still have a stacking swivel out here,
that feature would remain all the way through the Number 4 series.
And lastly, I have taken off the handguards here
because this has a really interesting barrel that I wanted to show you.
It has these two really big scooped flutes cut out of the top of the barrel.
This was clearly done in an effort to lighten the barrel without reducing rigidity.
And they come all the way to about two-thirds of the way down the barrel,
before you get out to the front sight there.
These marks on the barrel, by the way, are British proof house marks.
When this rifle was released into private hands it did have to go through the proofing process.
Next we have, if you could call it this, a standard prototype of the Number 1 Mark VI.
It is in fact serial Number 1.
What we see on this one is much ... closer to the standard features
that will end up being on the Number 4 rifle.
So the cocking piece is now graspable again, although this isn't the final pattern thereof.
The protective wings on the rear sight are now gone, and they would remain gone.
We do still have the magazine cut off.
So for folks who aren't familiar with these, this is a way to load the magazine
and then you engage the cut off which allows you to single load the rifle.
And keep the magazine in reserve until such time as the officer in command of your unit
decides that it's time to rapid fire, and then gives the command to
disengage the cut off and fire from the magazine.
With this prototype we also find
what will basically be the final version of the Number 4 front end.
So we now have this hinged front band, so you can ... undo this screw
and then the front band hinges open instead of sliding back and forth.
We have the front sight and its wings in their pretty much final form.
Not quite: the exact style of these wings is a little different than on a final Number 4 rifle.
The bayonet lugs are in the same place,
but you'll notice there is now a little projecting wing on this one.
And that there so that you can only ... lock the bayonet on in the correct orientation.
With the very first prototype it would be possible to mount the bayonet upside down,
and have it then obscure your sight picture.
So just to prevent that from happening, add a little [wing] on the lug and you're good to go.
We do of course still have this very distinctive deep square checkering on the stock.
And they've actually added checkering to the butt plate.
This checkering would not last all that long, and to be honest, you know what?
On brass, checkering that fine doesn't really convey any real benefit.
That's not going to stick on your shoulder really any better than a standard smooth butt plate.
And for that reason, by the time they got to the actual ... trials versions of this rifle,
this feature would be left off.
Now with the third rifle we come to ... really the standard pattern of the Number 1 Mark VI.
We still have this distinctive square checkering.
We still have an early version of this cocking indicator.
This would change when it went to the Number 4.
The butt plate is now smooth.
As I mentioned, they got rid of the checkering there, there just wasn't any point to it.
And finally we have cool markings here on the receiver socket.
This is a 1929 production Number 1 Mark VI.
Not very common to find a rifle with that name on it.
Now you'll notice the serial number has been obliterated and replaced.
This originally was A0077, which would make it one of the very first
of the 1,000 trials guns produced with this designation.
However, and this happened to a lot of guns,
after Dunkirk happens the British military was in dire need of weaponry.
And so most of the trials Mark VI guns were taken back into service, retrofitted, and issued.
And when they did that they would stamp a new serial number on them with an "A" suffix.
So this is 96A, that A suffix indicates that it is not a standard Number 4 rifle,
and it doesn't have interchangeable parts with a standard Number 4.
That's there so that if the rifle comes back to an armourer for repair,
they immediately know that it is not a standard rifle.
Comparing this to our very early prototype,
you can see that this has the safety lever of a Number 1 Mark III.
This guy has the new style of safety lever, which would go on to be used in the Number 4s.
And last, but definitely not least, we have one of the Number 4 Mark I trials rifles.
This is a 1931 dated rifle.
And ... this is a kind of interesting, unusual situation where the rifle didn't actually change,
they changed the name of it without changing the actual properties of the gun at this point.
So as production went through a couple of different phases
they slowly changed a few features.
In 1931 this was formally redesignated the Number 4 Mark I.
And we can see that in the socket markings here.
Enfield, 1931, Number 4 Mark I rifle.
There were 2,500 of this type of rifle made,
this was the B pattern Number 4 Mark I trials rifle.
They have the same type of serial number as the Mark VIs,
"A" and then four digits, but these restarted at zero.
So with this type of socket marking, if it says Number 1 Mark VI
the serial numbers will go from A0001 up to about A1000.
And then with the Number 4 Mark I they'll go from A0001 up to about A2500.
Beyond that, the one difference that we'll see here is that square checkering is now gone.
So ... the nose cap is still not quite in its final production version,
but it's really, really close. It's certainly functionally identical.
And at this point we are basically looking at what the British would adopt as the Number 4.
I should point out, all the way through these trials guns they still retained that magazine cut off.
The British kept this feature longer than most other militaries.
But by the time the Number 4 was in major production it would be finally deleted.
Finding rifles of this model, the Number 1 Mark VI,
including examples in its later designation, the Number 4 designation,
that's a difficult task under the best of circumstances.
Even the most "common" version, ... the last version of them right here,
even though they made 2,500, most of those ended up
destroyed during World War Two or reconverted.
A lot of these actually ended up converted into Number 4 Mark I (T) sniper rifles.
A bunch of the parts changed around,
and they simply don't exist in the original configuration anymore.
And of course finding the prototypes, and even the really early developmental examples,
is something that just normally doesn't ever happen.
So very cool to be able to not just find one, but all four of these in the same place,
and be able to look at them comparatively.
It really is the comparison that allows you to see what was going on.
They are all actually of course coming up for sale here at Julia.
So if you're interested in one, two, or all four of them,
take a look at the description text below the video,
you'll find links there to the catalogue pages for each of these four rifles.
And you can take a look at the descriptions, and provenances,
and photographs of each individual one,
and place a bid right there through the website,
or come up here to Maine and participate in the auction live.
Thank you for watching.